Intel Core i7-6700HQ vs. Intel Core i7-7700HQ ?? Big difference??

I'm looking at two versions of the Dell XPS 15 laptop. There is about $300 different b/t the two, with (obviously) the i7-7700 HQ being the higher priced. Does the second one have a noticeably improved performance (how much of an improvement), is the extra $300 or so really worth it? And will the difference in the NVIDIA graphics have much impact on performance? No gaming planned, only photography-related.

There's always going to be something better that costs more. Programs will always update and require better and better hardware.

I'm guessing you're mostly going to be using lightroom and photoshop. Are both laptops going to have 16GB RAM?

If your ram fills up that's the worst possible situation because things will grind to a halt. With photoshop and lightroom open on windows 10 I'm using ~8GB RAM so 16GB is probably the minimum you want. If you get 8GB you might have to close one program to use the other.

SSD, RAM and CPU are probably the most important things when it comes to photoshop/lightroom. The difference between those GPU's won't have any noticeable effect on photo editing.

A better CPU will help if you do a lot of special effects rendering/video rendering. If not the lower end one should be fine.

If you're working on 50mpixel images you should probably get the best you can, if not the lower end laptop should be fine for quite a while.

HappyShotz wrote in post #18314557Thanks for your response. Both have 24GB RAM.

So the 2GB vs. 4GB must be resident on the video card for graphics processing?! In that case, unless your intent is to play some games with 3D graphics, I would not bother to buy the more expensive machine...the cost difference appears to go into the graphics processor and its video RAM.

I have an Acer V17 Nitro Black Edition , with the i7 6700 hq, SSD & 16 GB RAM & Geforce GTX 960M. I can tell you that LR 6 works very well and fast , even when making big Panoramas. So with your Dell and 24 GB RAM it will be even better. I would save the money and take the cheaper one.

May be processors won't make much of the difference here as i7-7700HQ(Base - 2.8GHz, Turbo - 3.8GHz) has negligible amount of more clock speed than the i7-6700HQ(Base - 2.6GHz, Turbo - 3.5GHz) but the 4GB Nvidia 1050 graphics over 960M 2GB can significantly effect the overall performance of laptop.

Actually, it is not about which GPU they both come with, it is about the amount of VRAM they have. From benchmarks you won't notice much difference in performance of Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M and 1050 but when it comes to 2GB 960M vs 4GB 1050, I don't think we need to spend more time in identifying the winner here.

Coming back to processor,

As I said earlier that there is not much difference in performance of both CPUs but as you'll be using your laptop most of the time for PS and LR, processor has again became a very important choice to make.

As said by Desolate Mirror earlier in this thread that SSD, RAM and CPU are the most important things to check while buying laptop for photo editing, so agreeing with that -

1TB SSD on a laptop is very good (you can cut on rates by buying the laptop with 512GB and using an external hard drive but that's up to you),

24GB of RAM is again very good (You should be fine with even 16GB but having more amount of RAM is always beneficial)

Processor - i7-7700HQ vs i7-6700HQ

The newer generation processor will come with its own perks but they won't be game changing. Most of the times, newer generation processor are better in terms of handling multitasking, battery efficiency and thermal management. If you want to know how much better particularly the newer generation i7 is, then here's the 3D Mark, X264 and Cinebench benchmark comparison of both i7 laptop processor models. You can decide there by analysing the real life performance scores of both the i7 models.

Overall, I think the newer Dell XPS laptop (with 7th gen i7 and GTX 1050) would be better for Photoshop/Lightroom and also in terms of overall performance. You can also get the older Dell XPS, if you're running tight on budget. That would be also a great choice for PS and LR but if you can flex your budget then go for the newer Kaby Lake Dell XPS, it would be a much better choice.

The performance between 5th, 6th and 7th generation CPU's should not be a deciding factor, at best you are looking at 10% gain per generation, in some circumstances there is no real world gain. For Lr/Ps GPU usage is minimal and can actually hinder performance. I would prioritize connection port options over a 10% performance gain, if the 6700HQ has all the required ports you will need now and the near future it is the better deal(personally I would want at least USB Type C, USB 3.1, Thunderbolt and DisplayPort in one form or another).

The differences in the GPU's will only really matter if you are doing video editing, and mostly then it will be the rendering stage, not the interactive editing that will benefit the most.

My system has an Nividia GTX 960 and I have a 5K disply, supposedly the exact combination that would give the best performance with Lr's GPU acceleration. I still find Lr runs better with GPU support off. Even though it is pretty much always running at 1:1 view.

agreed, obviously having a nice high end processor is a great starting point. but as long as you've got a lot of RAM and a good SSD that'll go along way! Just got a new machine myself with an i7-7600, 32gb RAM, and a 1TB SSD.

I would say that the biggest difference between the two laptops would be not the processors but the Graphics cards that come with them. A 2gb gtx960 would score alot less on cgi editing or implementing graphic design in videos if you are into that type of work.

KDPIV wrote in post #18457425I would say that the biggest difference between the two laptops would be not the processors but the Graphics cards that come with them. A 2gb gtx960 would score alot less on cgi editing or implementing graphic design in videos if you are into that type of work.

@kdpiv Your sig is pretty distracting. Any chance you could remove the big bold font?

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